90 Works of Arthur B. Reeve

A big, powerful, red touring-car, with a shining brass bell on the front of it, was standing at the curb before our apartment late one afternoon as I entered. It was such a machine as one frequently sees threading its reckless course in and out among the trucks and street-cars, breaking all rules and regulations, […]

By this time I was becoming used to Kennedy’s strange visitors and, in fact, had begun to enjoy keenly the uncertainty of not knowing just what to expect from them next. Still, I was hardly prepared one evening to see a tall, nervous foreigner stalk noiselessly and unannounced into our apartment and hand his card […]

“Hello! Yes, this is Professor Kennedy. I didn’t catch the name – oh, yes – President Blake of the Standard Burglary Insurance Company. What – really? The Branford pearls – stolen? Maid chloroformed? Yes, I’ll take the case. You’ll be up in half an hour? All right, I’ll be here. Goodbye.” It was through this […]

Kennedy’s suit-case was lying open on the bed, and he was literally throwing things into it from his chiffonier, as I entered after a hurried trip up-town from the Star office in response to an urgent message from him. “Come, Walter,” he cried, hastily stuffing in a package of clean laundry without taking off the […]

We were lunching with Stevenson Williams, a friend of Kennedy’s, at the Insurance Club, one of the many new downtown luncheon clubs, where the noon hour is so conveniently combined with business. “There isn’t much that you can’t insure against nowadays,” remarked Williams when the luncheon had progressed far enough to warrant a tentative reference […]

Kennedy and I had just tossed a coin to decide whether it should be a comic opera or a good walk in the mellow spring night air and the opera had won, but we had scarcely begun to argue the vital point as to where to go, when the door buzzer sounded – a sure […]

“Interesting story, this fight between the Five-Borough and the Inter-River Transit,” I remarked to Kennedy as I sketched out the draft of an expose of high finance for the Sunday Star. “Then that will interest you, also,” said he, throwing a letter down on my desk. He had just come in and was looking over […]

“Detectives in fiction nearly always make a great mistake,” said Kennedy one evening after our first conversation on crime and science. “They almost invariably antagonize the regular detective force. Now in real life that’s impossible–it’s fatal.” “Yes,” I agreed, looking up from reading an account of the failure of a large Wall Street brokerage house, […]

“Shake hands with Mr. Burke of the secret service, Professor Kennedy.” It was our old friend First Deputy O’Connor who thus in his bluff way introduced a well-groomed and prosperous-looking man whom he brought up to our apartment one evening. The formalities were quickly over. “Mr. Burke and I are old friends,” explained O’Connor. “We […]

“What a relief it will be when this election is over and the newspapers print news again,” I growled as I turned the first page of the Star with a mere glance at the headlines. “Yes,” observed Kennedy, who was puzzling over a note which he had received in the morning mail. “This is the […]

“I won’t deny that I had some expectations from the old man myself.” Kennedy’s client was speaking in a low, full chested, vibrating voice, with some emotion, so low that I had entered the room without being aware that any one was there until it was too late to retreat. “As his physician for over […]

It was a rather sultry afternoon in the late summer when people who had calculated by the calendar rather than by the weather were returning to the city from the seashore, the mountains, and abroad. Except for the week-ends, Kennedy and I had been pretty busy, though on this particular day there was a lull […]

“Craig, do you see that fellow over by the desk, talking to the night clerk?” I asked Kennedy as we lounged into the lobby of the new Hotel Vanderveer one evening after reclaiming our hats from the plutocrat who had acquired the checking privilege. We had dined on the roof garden of the Vanderveer apropos […]

Files of newspapers and innumerable clippings from the press bureaus littered Kennedy’s desk in rank profusion. Kennedy himself was so deeply absorbed that I had merely said good evening as I came in and had started to open my mail. With an impatient sweep of his hand, however, he brushed the whole mass of newspapers […]

Kennedy was deeply immersed in writing a lecture on the chemical compositions of various bacterial toxins and antitoxins, a thing which was as unfamiliar to me as Kamchatka, but as familiar to Kennedy as Broadway and Forty-second Street. “Really,” he remarked, laying down his fountain-pen and lighting his cigar for the hundredth time, “the more […]

“I’m willing to wager you a box of cigars that you don’t know the most fascinating story in your own paper to-night,” remarked Kennedy, as I came in one evening with the four or five newspapers I was in the habit of reading to see whether they had beaten the Star in getting any news […]

It was, I recall, at that period of the late unpleasantness in the little Central American republic of Vespuccia, when things looked darkest for American investors, that I hurried home one evening to Kennedy, bursting with news. By way of explanation, I may add that during the rubber boom Kennedy had invested in stock of […]

Kennedy and I had been dining rather late one evening at Luigi’s, a little Italian restaurant on the lower West Side. We had known the place well in our student days, and had made a point of visiting it once a month since, in order to keep in practice in the fine art of gracefully […]

“There’s something queer about these aeroplane accidents at Belmore Park,” mused Kennedy, one evening, as his eye caught a big headline in the last edition of the Star, which I had brought uptown with me. “Queer?” I echoed. “Unfortunate, terrible, but hardly queer. Why, it is a common saying among the aeronauts that if they […]

Kennedy and I had risen early, for we were hustling to get off for a week-end at Atlantic City. Kennedy was tugging at the straps of his grip and remonstrating with it under his breath, when the door opened and a messenger-boy stuck his head in. “Does Mr. Kennedy live here?” he asked. Craig impatiently […]

“Take care of me–please–please!” A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment. “It isn’t faintness or illness exactly–but–it’s all so hazy,” stammered the girl breathlessly. “And I’ve forgotten who I […]

“Madam, would you mind going with me for a few moments to the office on the third floor?” Constance Dunlap had been out on a shopping excursion. She had stopped at the jewelry counter of Stacy’s to have a ring repaired and had gone on to the leather goods department to purchase something else. The […]

“They’re late this afternoon.” “Yes. I think they might be on time. I wish they had made the appointment in a quieter place.” “What do you care, Anita? Probably somebody else is doing the same thing somewhere else. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.” “I know he has treated me like […]

“I have a terrible headache,” remarked Constance Dunlap to her friend, Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the Mayfair, who had dropped in to see her one afternoon. “You poor, dear creature,” soothed Adele. “Why don’t you go to see Dr. Price? He has cured me. He’s splendid–splendid.” Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland […]

It was what, in college, we used to call “good football weather”–a crisp, autumn afternoon that sent the blood tingling through brain and muscle. Kennedy and I were enjoying a stroll on the drive, dividing our attention between the glowing red sunset across the Hudson and the string of homeward-bound automobiles on the broad parkway. […]

“We’ll land here, Mrs. Dunlap.” Ramon Santos, terror of the Washington State Department and of a half dozen consulates in New York, stuck a pin in a map of Central America spread out on a table before Constance. “Insurrectos will meet us,” he pursued, then added, “but we must have money, first, my dear Senora, […]

“I suppose you have heard something about the troubles of the Motor Trust? The other directors, you know, are trying to force me out.” Rodman Brainard, president of the big Motor Corporation, searched the magnetic depths of the big brown eyes of the woman beside his desk. Talking to Constance Dunlap was not like talking […]

“Do you believe in dreams?” Constance Dunlap looked searchingly at her interrogator, as if her face or manner betrayed some new side of her character. Mrs. deForest Caswell was an attractive woman verging on forty, a chance acquaintance at a shoppers’ tea room downtown who had proved to be an uptown neighbor. “I have had […]

“They have the most select clientele in the city here.” Constance Dunlap was sitting in the white steamy room of Charmant’s Beauty Shop. Her informant, reclining dreamily in a luxurious wicker chair, bathed in the perspiring vapor, had evidently taken a fancy to her. “And no wonder, either; they fix you up so well,” she […]

We found the Novella Beauty Parlour on the top floor of an office-building just off Fifth Avenue on a side street not far from Forty-second Street. A special elevator, elaborately fitted up, wafted us up with express speed. As the door opened we saw a vista of dull-green lattices, little gateways hung with roses, windows […]

The day was far advanced after this series of very unsatisfactory interviews. I looked at Kennedy blankly. We seemed to have uncovered so little that was tangible that I was much surprised to find that apparently he was well contented with what had happened in the case so far. “I shall be busy for a […]

“Jameson, I want you to get the real story about that friend of yours, Professor Kennedy,” announced the managing editor of the Star, early one afternoon when I had been summoned into the sanctum. From a batch of letters that had accumulated in the litter on the top of his desk, he selected one and […]

There was something of the look of the hunted animal brought to bay at last in Carlton Dunlap’s face as he let himself into his apartment late one night toward the close of the year. On his breath was the lingering odor of whisky, yet in his eye and hand none of the effects. He […]

The horrible thought occurred to me that perhaps he was not alone. I had seen Spencer’s infatuation with his attractive librarian. The janitor of the studio-building was positive that a woman answering her description had been a visitor at the studio. Would she be used to get at the millionaire and his treasures? Was she […]

The American Medici disappeared into his main library, where Miss White was making a minute examination to determine what damage had been done in the realm over which she presided. “Apparently every book with a green binding has been mutilated in some way,” resumed Dr. Lith, “but that was only the beginning. Others have suffered, […]

Far after midnight though it had been when we had at last turned in at our apartment, Kennedy was up even earlier than usual in the morning. I found him engrossed in work at the laboratory. “Just in time to see whether I’m right in my guess about the illness of Brixton,” he remarked, scarcely […]

Brixton had evidently been waiting impatiently for our arrival. “Mr. Kennedy?” he inquired, adding quickly without waiting for an answer: “I am glad to see you. I suppose you have noticed the precautions we are taking against intruders? Yet it seems to be all of no avail. I can not be alone even here. If […]

The alarm wakened me all right, but to my surprise Kennedy had already gone, ahead of it. I dressed hurriedly, bolted an early breakfast, and made my way to Trimble’s. He was not there, and I had about concluded to try the laboratory, when I saw him pulling up in a cab from which he […]

It was only after a few hours that Kennedy thought it wise to try to question the poor girl at the hospital. Her story was simple enough in itself, but it certainly complicated matters considerably without throwing much light on the case. She had been busy because her day was full, and she had yet […]

Quickly Kennedy outlined, with Donnelly’s permission, the story we had just heard. The two store detectives saw the humour of the situation, as well as the seriousness of it, and fell to comparing notes. “The professional as well as the amateur shop-lifter has always presented to me an interesting phase of criminality,” remarked Kennedy tentatively, […]

As we hurried into Chinatown from Chatham Square we could see that the district was celebrating its holidays with long ropes of firecrackers, and was feasting to reed discords from the pipes of its most famous musicians, and was gay with the hanging out of many sunflags, red with an eighteen-rayed white sun in the […]

O’Connor drew back the sheet which covered her and in the calf of the leg disclosed an ugly bullet hole. Ugly as it was, however, it was anything but dangerous and seemed to indicate nothing as to the real cause of her death. He drew from his pocket a slightly misshapen bullet which had been […]

The note of appeal in her tone was powerful, but I could not so readily shake off my first suspicions of the woman. Whether or not she convinced Kennedy, he did not show. “I was only a young girl when I met Mr. Thornton,” she raced on. “I was not yet eighteen when we were […]

“The Star was not far from right, Walter,” he added, seriously. “If the battleship plans could be stolen, other things could be– other things were. You remember Burke of the secret service? I’m going up to Lookout Hill on the Connecticut shore of the Sound with him to-night. The rewrite men on the Record didn’t […]

I followed him in awe as he made a hasty inventory of what we had discovered. There were as many as a dozen finished and partly finished infernal machines of various sizes and kinds, some of tremendous destructive capacity. Kennedy did not even attempt to study them. All about were high explosives, chemicals, dynamite. There […]

We stared at each other in blank awe, at the various parts, so innocent looking in the heaps on the table, now safely separated, but together a combination ticket to perdition. “Who do you suppose could have sent it?” I blurted out when I found my voice, then, suddenly recollecting the political and legal fight […]

We arrived late at night, or rather in the morning, but in spite of the late hour Kennedy was up early urging me to help him carry the stuff over to Cushing’s laboratory. By the middle of the morning he was ready and had me scouring about town collecting his audience, which consisted of the […]

I looked aghast at him. If it had been either Bradford or Lambert, both of whom we had come to know since Kennedy had interested himself in the case, or even Hollins or Kilgore, I should not have been surprised. But Miriam! “How could she have any connection with the case?” I asked incredulously. Kennedy […]

As we sped out to the little mill-town on the last train, after Kennedy had insisted on taking us all to a quiet little restaurant, he placed us so that Miss Winslow was furthest from him and her father nearest. I could hear now and then scraps of their conversation as he resumed his questioning, […]

In the early forenoon, we were on our way by train “up the river” to Sing Sing, where, at the station, a line of old-fashioned cabs and red-faced cabbies greeted us, for the town itself is hilly. The house to which we had been directed was on the hill, and from its windows one could […]

Still holding Dana Phelps between us, we hurried toward the tomb and entered. While our attention had been diverted in the direction of the swamp, the body of Montague Phelps had been stolen. Dana Phelps was still deliberately brushing off his clothes. Had he been in league with them, executing a flank movement to divert […]

“H-M,” mused Kennedy, weighing the contents of the note carefully, “one of the family, I’ll be bound–unless the whole thing is a hoax. By the way, who else is there in the immediate family?” “Only a brother, Dana Phelps, younger and somewhat inclined to wildness, I believe. At least, his father did not trust him […]

Remembering Jules Verne’s enticing picture of life on the palatial Nautilus, I may as well admit that I was not prepared for a real submarine. My first impression, as I entered the hold, was that of discomfort and suffocation. I felt, too, that I was too close to too much whirring machinery. I gazed about […]

“I came here to hide, to vanish forever from those who know me.” The young man paused a moment to watch the effect of his revelationof himself to Constance Dunlap. There was a certain cynicalbitterness in his tone which made her shudder. “If you were to be discovered–what then?” she hazarded. Murray Dodge looked at […]

In my absence Craig had set to work on a peculiar apparatus, as though he were distilling something from several of the other cigarette stubs. I placed the cat in a basket and watched Craig until finally he seemed to be rewarded for his patient labors. It was well along toward morning when he obtained […]

Senora de Moche–for I had no doubt now that this was the Peruvian Indian woman of whom Senorita Inez had spoken–seemed to lose interest in us and in the concert the moment Don Luis went out. Her son also seemed restive. He was a good-looking fellow, with high forehead, nose slightly aquiline, chin and mouth […]

“You don’t know the woman who is causing the trouble. You haven’t seen her eyes. But–Madre de Dios!–my father is a changed man. Sometimes I think he is–what you call–mad!” Our visitor spoke in a hurried, nervous tone, with a marked foreign accent which was not at all unpleasing. She was a young woman, unmistakably […]

It was early the next morning, about half an hour after the time set for the release of the passengers, that our laboratory door was flung open and Collette Aux Cayes rushed in, wildly excited. “What’s the matter?” asked Kennedy anxiously. “Someone has been trying to keep me on the boat,” she panted. “And all […]

Our trip over to the other borough was uneventful except for the toilsome time we had to get to the docks where South and Central American ships were moored. We boarded the Haytien at last and Burke led us along the deck toward a cabin. I looked about curiously. There seemed to be the greatest […]

“Everybody’s crazy, Kennedy. The whole world is going mad!” Our old friend, Burke, of the Secret Service, scowled at the innocent objects in Craig’s laboratory as he mopped his broad forehead. “And the Secret Service is as bad as the rest,” he went on, still scowling and not waiting for any comment from us. “Why, […]

I tried my best, but there was very little that I could find out about Mrs. Barry. No one seemed to know where she came from, and even “Mr. Barry” seemed shrouded in obscurity. I was convinced, however, that she was an adventuress. One thing, however, I did turn up. She had called on Tresham […]

“You’ve heard of such things as cancer houses, I suppose, Professor Kennedy?” It was early in the morning and Craig’s client, Myra Moreton, as she introduced herself, had been waiting at the laboratory door in a state of great agitation as we came up. Just because her beautiful face was pale and haggard with worry, […]

Kennedy’s first move was to go downtown to the old building opposite the City Hall and visit the post-office inspectors. “I’ve heard of the government’s campaign against the medical quacks who are using the mails,” he introduced when we at last found the proper inspector. “I wonder whether you know a Dr. Adam Loeb?” “Loeb?” […]

I was surprised to run into O’Hanlon himself in the train out to Norwood. The failure to get Dr. Loeb troubled him and he had reasoned that if Darius Moreton took the trouble to write a letter about his friend he might possibly know more of his whereabouts than he professed. We discussed the case […]

It was after the dinner hour that we found ourselves at the Country Club again. Wyndham had not come back from the city, but Allison was there and had gathered together all the Club help so that Kennedy might question them. He did question them down in the locker-room, I thought perhaps for the moral […]

“Perpetual motion sounds foolish, I’ll admit. But, Professor Kennedy, this Creighton self-acting motor does things I can’t explain.” Craig looked perplexed as he gazed from Adele Laidlaw, his young and very pretty client, to me. We had heard a great deal about the young lady, one of the wealthiest heiresses of the country. She paused […]

As Kennedy walked through the corridor of the building, he paused and bent down, as though examining the wall. I looked, too. There was a crack in the concrete, in the side wall toward the Creighton laboratory. “Do you suppose vibration caused it?” I asked, remembering his watch crystal test. Craig shook his head. “The […]

Fortunately, Dean Allison was at the Club, as we hoped, having just arrived by the train that left New York at the close of the banking day. Someone told us, however, that Wyndham had probably decided to remain in town over night. Allison was perhaps a little older than I had imagined, rather a grave […]

“Isn’t there some way you can save him, Professor Kennedy? You must come out to Briar Lake.” When a handsome woman like Mrs. Fraser Ferris pleads, she is irresistible. Not only that, but the story which she had not trusted either to a message or a messenger was deeply interesting, for, already, it had set […]

It was apparent that quick action was necessary if the mystery was ever to be solved. Kennedy evidently thought so, too, for he did not wait even until he returned to his laboratory to set in motion, through our old friend, Commissioner O’Connor, the machinery that would result in warrants to compel the attendance at […]

Dr. Leslie, the Coroner, was an old friend of ours with whom we had co-operated in several cases. When we reached his office we found Dr. Blythe there already, waiting for us. “Have you found anything yet?” asked Dr. Blythe with what I felt was just a trace of professional pique at the fact that […]

“I want to consult you, Professor Kennedy, about a most baffling case of sudden death under suspicious circumstances. Blythe is my name–Dr. Blythe.” Our visitor spoke deliberately, without the least perturbation of manner, yet one could see that he was a physician who only as a last resort would appeal to outside aid. “What is […]

He gave me no time for questions, and I had no ability to reconstruct my own theory of the case as we hustled into our clothes to catch the early morning train. “Broadhurst is at the Idlewild Hotel,” Kennedy said, as we left the apartment, “and I think we can make it quicker by railway […]

That night, instead of going to the laboratory, we walked down Broadway until we came to a hotel much frequented by the sporting fraternity. We entered the restaurant, which was one of the most brilliant in the white-light region, took a seat at a table, and Kennedy proceeded to ingratiate himself with the waiter, and, […]

“Perhaps race-horses may be a little out of your line, Mr. Kennedy, but I think you will find the case sufficiently interesting to warrant you in taking it up.” Our visitor was a young man, one of the most carefully groomed and correctly dressed I have ever met. His card told us that we were […]

It was not until the middle of the afternoon that there came a sudden, brief message from the Secret Service in Washington: Mr. Craig Kennedy,New York. I have located the Baroness Von Dorf in a private sanitariumhere and will have her in New York tonight by eight o’clock. BURKE. “In a private sanitarium–will have her […]

Dr. Leslie looked at Haynes searchingly. “Who was it?” he asked. “Madame Dupres?” Haynes did not hesitate. “Yes,” he nodded. “I had an appointment with her and told her that if I was late it would probably be that I had stopped here.” The answer came so readily that I must confess that I was […]

“I’ve got to make good in this Delaney case, Kennedy,” appealed our old friend, Dr. Leslie, the coroner, one evening when he had dropped unexpectedly into the laboratory, looking particularly fagged and discouraged. “You know,” he added, “they’ve been investigating my office–and now, here comes a case which, I must confess, completely baffles us again.” […]

Kennedy groped about for a light, stumbling over boxes and bags. “For heaven’s sake, Craig,” I entreated. “Be careful. Those packages are full of the devilish things!” He said nothing. At least we had a little more freedom to move and I managed to find my way over to a little round porthole and open […]

He ripped the little mechanical eavesdropper out, wires and all, but he did not disconnect the wires, yet. We traced it out, and down into the cellar the wires led, directly, and then across, through a small opening in the foundations into the next cellar of an apartment house, ending in a bin or storeroom. […]

“I suppose you have read in the papers of the mysterious burning of our country house at Oceanhurst, on the south shore of Long Island?” It had been about the middle of the afternoon that a huge automobile of the latest design drew up at Kennedy’s laboratory and a stylishly dressed woman, accompanied by a […]

As I entered the laboratory I saw before him a peculiar, telescope-like instrument, at one end of which, in a jar of oxygen, something was burning with a brilliant, penetrating flame. He paused in his work and I hastened to tell him of the peculiar experience I had had in the forenoon. But he said […]

Craig had completed a hasty search of the room, with its little dressing table, two trunks, and a cabinet. Everything seemed to have been kept in a most neat and orderly manner by the attentive Cecilie, who was apparently a model servant. The little white bathroom was equally immaculate, and Kennedy passed next to an […]

“Meet Sylvania Quarantine midnight. Strange death Rawaruska. Retain you in interest steamship company. Thompson, Purser.” Kennedy had torn open the envelope of a wireless message that had come from somewhere out in the Atlantic and had just been delivered to him at dinner one evening. He read it quickly and tossed it over to me. […]

I felt, however, that Seabury accepted this conclusion reluctantly, in fact with a sort of mental reservation not to cease activity himself. The remainder of the forenoon, and for some time during the early afternoon, Craig plunged into one of his periods of intense work and abstraction at the laboratory. It was, indeed, a most […]

We paid our check and Kennedy and I sauntered in the direction Sherburne had taken, finding him ultimately in the cafe, alone. Without further introduction Kennedy approached him. “So–you are a detective?” sneered Sherburne superciliously, elevating his eyebrows just the fraction of an inch. “Not exactly,” parried Kennedy, seating himself beside Sherburne. Then in a […]

“My husband has such a jealous disposition. He will never believe the truth–never!” Agatha Seabury moved nervously in the deep easy chair beside Kennedy’s desk, leaning forward, uncomfortably, the tense lines marring the beauty of her fine features. Kennedy tilted his desk chair back in order to study her face. “You say you have never […]

The next day was that of the hunt and we motored out to the North Shore Hunt Club. It was a splendid day and the ride was just enough to put an edge on the meet that was to follow. We pulled up at last before the rambling colonial building which the Hunt Club boasted […]

It was a perfect autumn afternoon, one of those days when one who is normal feels the call to get out of doors and enjoy what is left of the fine weather before the onset of winter. We strode along in the bracing air until at last we turned into Broadway at the upper end […]